Cynic is awesome but their best album (IMO) is nearly 20 years old. Check out Gojira if you like Cynic. It's got that general feel. They're about the best French thing going these days.

Oh good lord, I love Gojira! I was going from a starting point for casual disregard...

BUT, Traced in Air is simply amazing!!! Have you given it the third listen that most progs deserve? Trust me, I'm as old school elitist as they come; Focus is in a class all on it's own, but so is Traced in Air...

including extreme disorientation in a room filled with fog where your face is masked, your hands are strapped to a table and ear-piercing death metal music is blaring through headphones while a screaming actor bashes a mallet around your fingers.

That sounds like someone grabs you to do all of that.

Well damn. Just tried the link again, still won't load; I'm really curious now. Where is this?

I think io9 had a long description of this place a few weeks ago, and, yes, its not your standard haunted house whe you walk through each room and gawk at the theme of that room.

IIRC, at some point they hold you in a chair, and take off you shoes, at which point some almost naked people start arguing over your shoes. Then you are led down some hallway barefoot, where the floor is covered in "damp condoms".At some point, you have to rescue your shoes from "crazed shoe collector" or something.

And then there's some guy, while you are being held down again, with a staplegun, firing it off against your face. Clearly, there's no staples in the thing, but you can still feel the impact of the trigger action.

casual disregard:CapeFearCadaver: R3: CapeFearCadaver: casual disregard: I really like Opeth but I find the rest of death metal to be a rather hard sell. In fact their latest album, Heritage, really isn't death metal at all. Anyone got suggestions for an Opeth connoisseur? I also enjoy Giant Squid, Stolen Babies, and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum if that helps. I did not like Unexpect, so let's not go in that direction.

Novembers Doom, maybe Neurosis...although now we are veering into Isis/Pelican/Tool territory.

Neurosis and Tool are as good a starting point as any... though I've found that Neurosis fans tend to lean heavily toward punk/trash; and Tool... Tool would be a good one; the 'jocky-ish', Former Marine I was seeing actually started there... in his mid-thirties. But he did previously enjoy watching me dance to Atheist's Elements while I was cooking dinner...

/I've never heard of any of those 4 other bands that casual disregard mentioned.

Very interesting, thank you for this - I always enjoy discovering new artists. Will definitely look into Giant Squid's output more closely.

Anyway, if you like the softer side of Opeth, check out Porcupine Tree (if you haven't already)...Steven Wilson (the main force behind the band) produced couple of Opeth's albums (starting from Deliverance/Damnation, IIRC) and there was a lot of cross-polination that happened as a result - try to find PT's Deadwing and you'll hear what I am talking about.

If you want to go really, really deep, look up Camel - this is the band Mikael Åkerfeldt quoted as his main influence. They are (were) 70's prog rock band, with elements of jazz. They featured flute and mellotron and had really knotty, complicated arrangements and compositions.